UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE A Study of Antichrist Typology in Six Biblical Dramas of ...

298 Pages·2014·1.27 MB·English

UC Riverside
UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
A Study of Antichrist Typology in Six Biblical Dramas of 17th Century Spain
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Author
Wells, Jason Allen
Publication Date
2014

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
RIVERSIDE

A Study of Antichrist Typology in Six
Biblical Dramas of 17th Century Spain

A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
in
Spanish
by
Jason Allen Wells
December 2014

Dissertation Committee:
Dr. James Parr, Chairperson
Dr. David Herzberger
Dr. Benjamin Liu
Copyright
Jason Allen Wells
2014
The Dissertation of Jason Allen Wells is approved:

Committee Chairperson

University of California, Riverside
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

A Study of Antichrist Typology in Six
Biblical Dramas of 17th Century Spain

by

Jason Allen Wells

Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Spanish
University of California, Riverside, December 2014
Dr. James Parr, Chairperson

This dissertation examines Antichrist types manifested in the primary antagonists of six
biblical dramas of seventeenth century Spanish theater. After researching the topic of
biblical typology in the works of theologians Sir Robert Anderson, G.H. Pember, Arthur
W. Pink, and Peter S. Ruckman, who propose various personages of both the Old and
New Testaments that adumbrate the Antichrist, I devise a reduced list based on extant
plays of the Spanish Golden Age whose main characters match the scriptural counterparts
of my register. These characters are Cain, Absalom, Haman, Herod the Great, Judas
Iscariot, and the Antichrist himself. I consult the Bible to provide the reader with
pertinent background information about these foreshadowings of the Son of Perdition and
then I compare and contrast these characteristics with those provided by the playwrights
in their respective works. By making these comparisons and contrasts the reader is able to
observe the poets’ embellishments of the source material, artistic contributions that in
many instances probably satisfy the reader’s desire for details not found in the biblical
iv
narratives. I take into consideration ecclesiastical demands placed on the playwrights that
can account for omissions or modifications in their theatrical productions of the source
material. I also analyze how the authors make use of non-scriptural sources and
incorporate them into their portrayals of my proposed Antichrist types. Unlike many
dissertations in the field of Spanish, which offer alternative readings to classic works of
literature, this study is unique in that it examines relatively unknown biblical dramas of
seventeenth century Spain by implementing the novel approach of typology, focusing not
on heroes but rather anti-heroes.

v
A Note on the Chapter Titles

Given the subject matter of my dissertation - Antichrist typology in six biblical plays of
17th century Spain - I have maintained the biblical theme in the titles of the chapters. The
following is an explanation of each chapter title:

1) Genesis = to discuss the genesis of the work; how the idea came about.

2) Revelation = to reveal Antichrist's characteristics from a biblical perspective as well
as from Medieval commentators' points of view.

3) Chronicles = to discuss social and historical events that people in the Middle Ages
attributed to the coming Antichrist; namely, the Black Death, the Great Schism

4) Psalms = to discuss writings on Antichrist’s features from early church fathers as well
as from 15th century Castilla

5) Acts = to discuss the Antichrist in medieval drama and the treatment of the figure of
Satan in Golden Age Theater. Plays consist of 3 "acts," hence the heading title. However,
the titles of the plays studied in this dissertation will have chapter headings under their
respective names.

6) Exodus = to conclude the dissertation; to "exit" from it.

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Table of Contents

Genesis …………………………………………………………………………..………. 1

Revelation ………………………………………………………………………..……… 5

Chronicles …………………………………………...…………………………..……... 28

Psalms …………………………………………………...……………………..………. 36

Acts ………………………………………………………….…………………...……... 47
La creación del mundo y primera culpa del hombre……………………………...70
Los cabellos de Absalón……………………………………………….….…….125
La hermosa Ester………………………………………………………..……...144
La vida y muerte de Herodes……………………………………………..…….173
La vida y muerte de Judas………………………………………………..……...211
El Anticristo……………………………………………………………..……...240
Exodus. .……………………………………………………………………..…..….......281

Works Cited ……………..……………………………………………………..……… 286

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GENESIS
The concept for this study began while I was undertaking an independent study on
various plays written by twentieth century playwright Antonio Buero Vallejo. One work
in particular, En la ardiente oscuridad, was especially appealing for its depiction of the
militant Christ figure Ignacio, a new student whose arrival at the school for the blind
immediately disrupts and rejects the apparent optimism enjoyed by his peers. Through
this rejection of the pupils’ happy world the protagonist emphatically insists they are
unwilling to face reality and succeeds in demonstrating the impracticality of their
collective delusion. Like Jesus, who recognized that his teachings would clash with the
accepted philosophies and ideologies of his time and thus warned his disciples: “Think
not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword”
(Matthew 10:34), Ignacio so advises his new classmates: “Yo os voy a traer guerra y no
paz” (74). This paraphrasing of the verse from Matthew’s gospel emphasizes that the
messianic role of Ignacio is also militant, alluding to an aspect of Christ that is often
ignored. It is this neglected feature that prompted me to write a paper titled “Ignacio and
the Power of Negative Thinking in Buero Vallejo’s En la ardiente oscuridad.”
Interested in biblical themes and the Bible itself, I wanted to know if Buero
Vallejo had ever written a biblical drama; that is, a dramatic representation of a story
rooted in the Scriptures and one that took place in biblical times. I soon discovered and
became immediately fascinated with Las palabras en la arena, a play consisting of only
one act yet the first of the playwright’s works to receive critical acclaim (Pennington 56).
1
The work is based on the text of John 8:1-1, the story of the adulterous woman forgiven
by Jesus just prior to being stoned to death. Buero Vallejo maintains the basic premise of
the gospel account yet embellishes it by adding depth to the characters of the Pharisees,
assigning proper names to them and giving each a distinct personality. However, the
apogee of the playwright’s creativity in this brief yet powerful drama can be observed in
the words that el Rabí writes in the sand, words that directly address the specific sins of
the five men who had accused the woman. This detail is not found in the scriptural
episode.
After some investigation it was determined rather quickly that there really were
not any known or at least accessible biblical plays from the same time period in which
Buero Vallejo wrote. It was not until winter quarter 2012, when researching a topic for
my final paper in a course on Golden Age Theater that I realized that the corpus of
comedias bíblicas resided in this epoch of Spanish literature in drama. Now there was
material out there from which to work, and based on my independent study of the Bible,
specifically the prophecies of Daniel and the book of Revelation, I began to formulate a
topic for the Long Paper and eventually, the doctoral dissertation. The study of typology
in the Bible has always intrigued me and thus, given the extant plays that were available I
was able to develop the concept of types of the Antichrist in seventeenth century Spanish
drama, selecting three works based on Old Testament stories and two from the New
Testament, plus a play on the Antichrist himself.
The subgenre of the comedia bíblica constitutes somewhat of an anomaly in my
opinion, the reason for which probably has to do with the religious culture that existed in
2